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Chuy's Defeat Proves Once Again That Nice Guys Finish Last

By Mark Konkol | April 9, 2015 6:56am
 Cook County Commissioner Jesus
Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia is taking the Chewies for Chuy Twitter feed seriously.
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DNAinfo/Ted Cox

In Chicago, a city starkly divided by class and race, Tuesday’s election ended with an ironic twist on the runoff campaign’s “Tale of Two Cities” narrative when Chicago voters — rich and poor alike — united in support of the mayor so many of them love to hate.

After taking a closer look at the first-ever mayoral runoff result, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel handily won with 56 percent of vote, the election appeared to be more of a referendum against his friendly, mustachioed opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, than an endorsement of the mayor himself.

Leading up to Election Day, the mayor’s approval rating on issues including trustworthiness, ethics and caring about city neighborhoods paled in comparison to how voters felt about Garcia, according to sources with access to campaign polling data.

On Tuesday, voters who identified themselves as wanting a mayor who cares about working class parts of Chicago and city public schools overwhelmingly voted for Garcia, a Cook County commissioner from the bungalow belt who billed himself a “neighborhood guy.”

Indeed, 72 percent of voters who said they wanted a mayor who “cares about people like me” picked Garcia, according to Edison Research executive vice president Joe Lenski, whose New Jersey-based firm conducted an exit poll for three news outlets, including The New York Times.

But voters who were most concerned with some of Chicago’s biggest troubles — the city’s looming financial crisis, gang-fueled street crime, the local economy and high unemployment rate — overwhelmingly sided with Emanuel even though he’s been strongly criticized for how his administration has managed all those issues during his first term.

Emanuel earned support of the rich and poor alike. Nearly 60 percent of voters with an annual family income under $30,000 and 62 percent of voters that make more than $100,000-a-year voted for the mayor, according to the Edison Research exit poll.

And the biggest irony in the Election Day exit polling data showed 61 percent of Chicagoans most affected by poverty, crime and failing schools — poor black families that earn fewer than $50,000 a year — voted for Emanuel. That’s a significantly higher percentage than the 52 percent of black voters with annual household incomes that top $50,000 who voted for the mayor, Lenski said.

In the end, those African American voters — some wrangled to the polls by a strong ground operation run by one of the late Cook County President John Stroger’s get-out-the-vote “generals,” Gerald Nichols — made all the difference for Emanuel.

“The swing voters were mainly black voters. There was no black candidate. They had to make a choice and they ended up choosing [Emanuel],” Lenski said.

“I wouldn’t take the mayor’s victory margin as an endorsement of his overall performance. If the election would have been a straight up-and-down vote on Rahm, this would have been a 1-point race.

“What Rahm did was spend $23 million to make the election about a choice between his management and Garcia’s potential management of the city. That’s why he won by the margin [12 percentage points] that he did,” Lenski said.

 Rahm Emanuel talks to students Wednesday after reading to them at Carole Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago. Emanuel was elected to his second term as mayor after defeating Cook County Commissioner Jesus Garcia in a runoff election.
Rahm Emanuel talks to students Wednesday after reading to them at Carole Robertson Center for Learning in Chicago. Emanuel was elected to his second term as mayor after defeating Cook County Commissioner Jesus Garcia in a runoff election.
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Joshua Lott/Getty Images

One veteran South Side political veteran said he was surprised by Emanuel’s Election Day success on the Southwest Side, home to a strong voting bloc of mostly white city workers and public school teachers.

“Rahm ran a good campaign. He constantly talked about Chuy being someone that can’t manage the big problems with the city and that struck a chord with all kinds of people who didn’t vote for Rahm the first time but began to think, ‘We don’t have much of a choice but to go with Rahm,’ ” the longtime politico said.

Emanuel campaign insiders said there’s no doubt there was a contingent of voters who used the first election as a opportunity to say “F.U.” to the mayor. But Tuesday’s runoff came down to those voters getting to know Garcia and deciding that while he might be a fine county commissioner, without specific plans on how to deal with the city's biggest troubles he’s not mayor material.

“The polls we had showed us people thought Chuy was a real nice guy, but once they got to know him and got more information about his record and saw what the mayor put on the table as far as his vision, [Garcia’s poll numbers] just started dropping and plateaued midway through the runoff,” an Emanuel insider said.

Garcia’s strongest City Council ally, Ald. Rick Munoz (22nd), said Emanuel’s deep pockets helped successfully frighten people into not believing in Chuy’s hopeful vision for struggling Chicago neighborhoods.

“Rahm’s negative mailers and negative TV campaign paid off for him. He was able to raise enough questions about Chuy’s ability to govern and we were not able to answer dollar for dollar,” said Munoz, who pulled 80 percent of his ward’s vote for Garcia.

“Why did those ads work so well? It’s because voters are either hopeful or scared. And Rahm was able to scare people into thinking Chuy was a bad guy.”

Certainly Emanuel’s campaign war chest and negative ads gave him a serious advertising advantage, but some political strategists say Chuy had a real shot to unseat Rahm and blew it.

Chicago Tribune cartoonist "Scott Stantis kept drawing Chuy as an empty suit. Chuy could have shot back and said Rahm cooks the books and I’ll have a plan when I know the truth. Instead, he wore the empty suit,” one Emanuel insider said.

“It was borderline political malpractice. They missed key opportunities. It was like he put the noose around his neck and tightened it. All we did was move the chair and not put it back.”

And for that, you could say, Chicago’s mean ol’ mayor with big plans won re-election by not losing to the nice guy with the cool mustache and a vision voters couldn’t see.

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